The ad first appeared on Illamasqua's Australian Facebook page, and despite getting a lot of criticism over use of imagery that has traditionally been interpreted as racist, the brand is arguing that its fans know the intent of the ad isn't racist.

Rather, the company says, the entire purpose of Illamasqua is to provide highly theatrical makeup that allows women to play dramatically with color. The fact that the campaign relies on a black and white theme is a function of the company's focus on color cosmetics, not an endorsement of blackface.

Here's the ad; we've excerpted the company's statement below:

Facebook / Illamasqua

The company told its Facebook fans:

Illamasqua is an independent British colour cosmetics brand founded on the principles of fairness, self-expression and delivering customers professional quality make-up. We embrace the diversity of humanity and feature people of all colours, ages and genders in our campaigns.

Today, illamasqua has received some negative attention on our Australian Facebook page in regard to one particular image from our Christmas 2012 campaign launched earlier this month. It features a model theatrically painted white juxtaposed to the same model painted black. The model painted black has been interpreted by some as "black face". This was certainly not our intention nor inspiration.

Given that our objective with this imagery was to be playful, striking and fresh with the creation of mirror images in white and black, using colour ON the skin it is very saddening that those making negative comments are focusing on colour OF the skin. The colour of the skin didn't come into it at the time we created the imagery so we are shocked by the cynicism behind some of the comments.

We have already issued the following statement on our Australian Facebook page:

"We thank and acknowledge your comments regarding the Christmas imagery. Obviously it was never our intention to cause offence; Illamasqua has always celebrated the right to self-expression and we continually push creative and artistic boundaries, priding ourselves on working with models of many ethnic backgrounds to reinforce this point. We emphasise that this campaign is about colour ON the skin not colour OF the skin, depicting polarity between the two images (both images are the same model) not race."